TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, finalised a deal on Thursday to set up a majority American-owned joint venture company to avoid a US ban on the social media app used by more than 200 million Americans.
The deal is a milestone for the short video platform after years of battles that began in August 2020, when US President Donald Trump first tried unsuccessfully to ban the app over national security concerns. He later did a U-turn and fought to save TikTok, crediting it with helping him to reach younger voters in the 2024 election.
He wrote on Truth Social that he was "so happy" the app would not be banned and praised China's President Xi Jinping for signing off on the deal.
TikTok USDS Joint Venture will secure US user data, apps and the algorithm through data privacy and cyber security measures, the company said.
The agreement provides for American and global investors, including cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, to hold a stake of 80.1 per cent in the joint venture, while ByteDance will retain 19.9 per cent.
Proponents of the deal pushed by the White House say it will satisfy national security concerns about China's access to US user data. Those concerns were behind a bipartisan law passed by Congress in 2024 that said TikTok would face a ban unless its Chinese owners divested from the platform.
ByteDance challenged the constitutionality of that law before the Supreme Court, but was unsuccessful. TikTok was briefly unavailable to US users after a Congress-set deadline was reached.
